24 Oct
2007
24 Oct
'07
5:49 p.m.
On 10/25/07, Charles <charlesmorris at hughes.net> wrote:
I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an
RL02 drive. It
is a Memorex "Mark III T" with a small label "Made in USA CI
04050" and various previous-owner stickers/scribbles showing first
use in 1983 up through 1985. The shock indicator is not red.
I have seen non-DEC RL packs in the past, but didn't DG or someone use
the same shell for their own drives, too?
1) the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are
trashed)...
Defective, or bulk-erased, which amounts to the same thing.
I don't recall what happens when you try to mount an RL01 pack in an
RL02, but you _might_ get an error light rather than just not get a
ready light.
You could hook a scope to some amplified head signal and at least
verify that there is *some* signal coming from the pack. That might
help eliminate bulk-erased media from consideration.
Perhaps someone with an old media company catalog might be able to
check order info for the Memorex pack, but ISTR the best days of the
RL01 were long behind it by 1983, which would make me initially expect
that it probably was some other cause than RL01 vs RL02 issues,
leaving "blank media" or "non-DEC media" as likely issues.
-ethan